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Would it be viable for Verizon to just convert to 3GPP completely? If they had one UMTS carrier deployed on 850 MHz, it would be easy to migrate people to a primarily VoLTE network. LTE would handle the vast majority of calls, and UMTS would be available as a fallback in marginal signal areas. The UMTS carrier would be under little load compared to Verizon's current 1x carriers because of offloading to LTE, so it might even improve effective coverage.

I suppose this would only make sense given several conditions. Seamless handover would need to be possible from VoLTE to UMTS (either VoIP or circuit-switched). The benefits from lower licencing/device costs, improvement in voice quality, and possible improvement in coverage would need to outweigh the cost of deployment and transient reduction in usable capacity while users upgrade to new devices compatible with the new configuration.

That sounds concerning if people attempt to do audio streaming on 1x. Are there any radio schemes that improve on that bandwidth?

Considering that there will be one 1x carrier and that's it, is it possible that it could be strained by data use? There will certainly be times when people have 1x 800 but can't connect to 1900 PCS. What is the fully loaded data capacity of 1x? I know it's 144 kbps or so per mobile, but what about in the aggregate?

Ah, I understand now. I am still working on getting this to work well; my biggest hurdle at the moment is my lack of graphic design skills.. having trouble adding text to my icons that is readable. If anyone is talented enough to help with that, or can at least point me towards a decent icon creation tool, I'd appreciate it!

I don't know much about making icons or what tools to use, but for themes that mesh with the different standard UIs (TouchWiz, Sense, AOSP, etc.) you could start with (or possibly straight up use) the icons in the SystemUI.apk files from the respective ROMs.

I was always curious if people would think the bars were displaying too high/too low; you're the first to bring it up. I have no problem tweaking the values if anyone thinks it will make the app more accurate. When I started developing SignalCheck, I basically set the values by slicing up the usable RSSI dBm range into mostly equal segments (<75, <85, <95, <105, <115, <120). I have no idea where other apps/ROMs set their cutoffs.

Ah, this would explain it. Those thresholds seem pretty low, even for CDMA 1x. 1x is the most robust out of 1x, EVDO, and LTE, and it gets pretty flaky at -110 dBm, even with good Ec/Io. EVDO gets unreliable at around -105 dBm or so, and LTE at around -95 dBm (for 5 MHz bandwidth).

I would revamp those scales a bit, by making separate ones for each protocol, possibly factoring in signal quality, and adding a category for zero bars, signifying "you technically have service, but good luck".

This would be an example scale for 1x.

SS: -74 -80 -86 -92 -98 -104 -110

Bars: 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

SS = RSSI + 2 * ( (Ec/Io) + 3) )

For LTE signals, I felt that calcuating RSSI based on RSRP & RSRQ would give a more useful measure of the true signal strength, instead of just RSRP (i.e. 'good' RSRP with 'good' RSRQ should be shown as better than 'good' RSRP with 'bad' RSRQ). Perhaps some of the gurus on here can advise if that was a reasonable idea or not?

RSSI isn't a good indicator for LTE signal 'strength'. It varies with bandwidth, and it actually looks better if the quality of the signal is reduced by strong interference. RSRP doesn't have those problems. RSRQ should be factored in somehow, but I believe it also varies with bandwidth. I would ask someone like WiWavelength for advice on a good scale for LTE signals.

Regarding multiple icons, I thought that most (if not all) devices already show the 1X signal strengths on their default bars on the top right side of the screen.. no? That was my major motivation to create this app in the first place. Perhaps I'm not totally understanding what you're looking for. Feel free to shoot me a PM if you want.

I think most phones/ROMs are set to work that way, but I'm certain that there are exceptions. Cyanogenmod shows the signal strength of the highest-level protocol the phone is connected to. So, when my phone is connected to 4G, I have no idea what my actual 1x signal strength is. Other AOSP ROMs probably work similarly, and I believe LG devices work that way by default.

Additionally, AOSP has a less precise signal indicator than what your app shows. Having two sets of bars from your app would allow users to just disable the system signal bars (if their ROM allows it) and get a better "read" on their signal.

I'm also curious about the way your app shows LTE signal strength. The signal strength appears much stronger than what CM10.1 displays for LTE. At -110 dBm RSRP, when LTE performance starts to significantly degrade, CM10.1 displays one bar out of 4, but SignalCheck displays about four out of seven.

Thank you for being so responsive.

I just bought the pro version since I think the features in the light app alone deserve $2. Seriously, thanks for this. It's simple, easy access to info I would otherwise not be able to see.

I have a few requests though. For the signal bars, would it be possible to add some options? First, I think it would be nice to be able to optionally show two sets of bars when connected to multiple cellular standards? It would be particularly useful when connected to LTE, as 1x site density is higher and maintains a useful connection at a lower RSSI. To be able to distinguish what each set means, a 4G/3G/1x indicator could be used.

Additionally, themes for the bars would be wonderful. Several simple options would be fine. I'm thinking AOSP, TouchWiz, Sense, and the current theme. It would make the bars "fit in" much better.

Thank you again for your work on this app.

Is it really that difficult to deploy cells in transit tunnels? I don't understand why subway coverage isn't widespread.

99.9% of existing PCS CDMA sites will be getting LTE/NV upgrades. It's fundamentally different from Verizon's strategy of overlaying for basic coverage.

LTE requires a stronger signal than EVDO or 1x to work, so it will have slightly worse coverage than 3G does now. However, during the network vision upgrades, Sprint is installing radio technology that will allow them to improve signal strength by up to 20% over their current deployment. Because of this, indoor coverage and performance should see a slight boost on any current Sprint phone after the upgrades.

Sometime after the initial upgrade, Sprint is then going to come through and enable 1x on the ESMR band, which is on a much lower frequency than their current PCS 1x. This will allow dramatically better in network coverage and signal strength. This will only affect 1x and will only work on phones released after the EVO 3D (sans iPhone 4 or 4S). Also, 1x only carries voice and 2G speed data, so 3G won't get any better after the initial upgrade.

Even further down the road, Sprint will deploy LTE on ESMR. Then, 4G will have better coverage than 3G by a significant margin. This will require new devices to access though.

You are missing my point. People who live in markets with larger site spacing might disproportionately prefer device A, while people who live in markets with tighter site spacing might disproportionately prefer device B. That could be unlikely, but if true, it would constitute bias in the sample set.

I think we're talking about different methodologies of comparison. What I'm saying is that the difference in the measurements between devices in a specific locations is what should be analysed. Say, on a busy stretch of highway, users of several different devices have sent in signal strength data points. The best way would be to take each point and compare it with all of the others within a certain radius, but it could be done more simply by dividing the highway into blocks. The blocks would be large enough to contain at least one or two points from each of the devices, but small enough to have a fairly consistent 'actual' signal strength. The average for each device within each block would be compared to the averages for the other devices in the block. Then, those differences could be aggregated and analysed.

The bias you're talking about wouldn't have any effect other than reducing the total useful dataset.

Location bias shouldn't matter if only multidevice datapoints are used. If an area has only datapoints from one device, it should be ignored.<br /><br /><br />Also, can't a reasonable examination of uplink performance be taken from FCC documents

Now that sounds like a good methodology. I'm really looking forward to that comparison article. You're just waiting until you can get a new comparison for the Evo?

With a large enough sample set, even the low resolution wouldn't be a problem. The precision errors would average out, and no device would have an unfair advantage because the errors would be close to randomly distributed.

However, calculating confidence intervals would be difficult, and the sample size of overlapping data points for any given device is probably too small, at least on LTE. Also, the fact that coverage is in flux because of active deployment makes the data almost worthless for this purpose at this point.

I wish there would be regulations that require all new FCC-approved handsets to have SIM-only authentication and CDMA2000, GSM, and UMTS support on the CEL and PCS bands. Since ESMR and CEL are adjacent to one another, maybe there should be mandatory ESMR support too, if it isn't too costly. This, in addition to a ban on locked devices and locked networks, would be very beneficial to consumers. Phone resale values would increase, it would be easier to switch carriers, and the subsidy-contract model would take a serious hit.

I just went to the dock to scan, but I forgot my keycard... I still got a 4G signal at the gate though. The signal was pretty weak. I got 9 mbps with a speed test. I lost signal pretty quickly after the line of sight to the river was blocked by foliage. Pretty exciting though. There should be some more points on Sensorly soon.

Haha, I actually live on Kingsland Court. I'm home now, and I'm fairly certain it's not that tower. I didn't get LTE on 13 even though I cycled multiple times. I don't have it at home either. I'll go closer to the river sometime soon to see. It's probably from a site in Clay County.

I live in River Oaks, so I'll probably beat you to it. :-P I'm out of town right now, but I'm hoping it's finally the tower at Racetrack...

I will address your third point later tonight.

Sorry to bump, but any more comments?

I think I've noticed a very marginal effect. My phone hasn't switched to roaming while I'm at home as much as it was doing before. The improvement definitely isn't super noticeable. It might be enough to have increased the indicated strength on phones that show like seven bars by one.

New York has much higher tower density than even what is needed for 2.5 GHz. Most "urban" (not counting a lot of cities in the South whose urban areas are really just ghettos with suburb density) areas should already have spacing that would work perfectly for seamless outdoor coverage.

Whether or not Sprint decides it would be worth it to blanket deploy remains to be seen. I think that would be the eventual trend, but initially the hotspot model would make more sense.

While Googling about LTE, I came across this document on the FCC's website. The tidbit I found most interesting was the section on bandwidth options. It listed the standard 6 options (1.4, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20) and then the "occupied bandwidth" for each carrier size (1.08, 2.7, 4.5, 9, 13.5, 18). I'm curious as to what exactly that means, and it brings up several questions.

• Since the occupied bandwidths and channel sizes for 5 MHz and above are proportional, does this mean that there is no "waste" from using two 5 MHz carriers instead of one 10 MHz carrier? For example, the 5 MHz carrier would have a peak speed of exactly half of the 10 MHz carrier.
  
• Is the unoccupied (so to speak) bandwidth required to be completely empty for the channel to work properly?
  
• If not, what is stopping Sprint from using the unoccupied bandwidth for CDMA carriers in ESMR? A configuration where the LTE carrier is sandwiched between a 1x and an EVDO carrier would fit into the 7 MHz they have in most places. The .25 MHz "extra" on each end of the LTE carrier would be shared with the CDMA carriers. It would look like this: |1|.25|4.5|.25|1|. I've read about an Australian carrier doing something similar with WCDMA and GSM when they refarmed either the 900 MHz or 850 MHz band.
  

Doesn't one of the iPhone 5 models support more than three bands? Something like 750/850/1800/1900/2100?

I think backhaul might already be connected. 3G is consistently above 1 mbps. When I was last here, during the summer, getting 600 kbps was a nice surprise. My signal isn't the greatest, either. It varies between -80 and -100 dBm in different parts of my house. Hopefully they're just in the last stages of testing LTE.

Would CA for two adjacent 5 MHz carriers have power consumption drawbacks compared to a single 10 MHz carrier?

Bleh, I really want the Racetrack and 13 tower in 32259 to go live! I'm used to nearly ubiquitous outdoor coverage in my part of Boston.